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Exhibit 99.1
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SONICWALL TO ACQUIRE PHOBOS
Phobus SSL Technology Allows SonicWALL to Rapidly Enter Market for Secure
Transaction Solutions For Enterprises, Service Providers and E-Commerce Sites
Sunnyvale, California - October 17, 2000 - SonicWALL, Inc. (NASDAQ: SNWL), a
leading provider of Internet security solutions, today announced that it has
entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Phobus Corporation, a privately-
held Internet security infrastructure manufacturer based in Salt Lake City,
Utah.
Under the terms of the agreement, approximately 12.2 million shares and options
of SonicWALL common stock and $50 million in cash will be exchanged for all
outstanding shares, options and warrants of Phobus Corporation. Based on
SonicWALL's closing price of $17.88 on October 16, 2000, the cash and stock
exchanged would have an aggregate value of approximately $268 million. Of the
$50 million, $20 million is contingent upon the achievement of certain revenue
targets by Phobus in 2001. The acquisition is expected to be completed by the
end of the year and is subject to customary closing conditions. SonicWALL
intends to account for the transaction under the purchase accounting method.
Phobus Corporation (www.phobus.com) designs and manufacturers innovative
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products that offload and accelerate secure transaction processing, delivering
higher performance for servers tasked with secure Internet-based applications.
Phobus' Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) products offload the burden of
encryption/decryption processing from the secure server, resulting in as much as
a 50-fold increase in the number of transactions an e-commerce site can handle.
Phobus also offers load balancing products that intelligently manage traffic
across web server farms, assuring optimal performance for the site. Together,
SSL offloading and load balancing deliver the speed, reliability and high
availability that medium to large enterprises, service providers and e-commerce
sites need.
The combination of SonicWALL's secure access products and value-added security
services and Phobus' secure transaction products creates a powerful and
comprehensive range of Internet security solutions. In addition to broadening
security solutions offered to small to medium business customers, the new
combination creates an unparalleled offering of distributed security solutions
for large enterprises, e-commerce sites and service providers to protect against
internal and external security threats.
"The market for distributed security solutions is growing rapidly as people
realize the importance of protecting their network from internal security
threats," said Sreekanth Ravi, President and CEO of SonicWALL. "With the
combination of SonicWALL's and Phobus' people and technologies, we are
positioned to enter this market and establish a leadership position."
"Phobus' expertise in SSL offloading and secure transaction management
complements SonicWALL's award-winning Internet security appliances," said Ron
Heinz, President and CEO of Phobus. "The technology and marketing synergies
between Phobus and SonicWALL will accelerate our entry into enterprise service
provider and e-commerce markets. These markets
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need secure access, as offered by the SonicWALL products, as well as high
availability and high performance secure transaction processing, as offered by
Phobus' products."
About SonicWALL, Inc.
SonicWALL, Inc. (NASDAQ: SNWL) is the leading provider of Internet security
solutions for broadband customers in the small to medium size enterprise (SME),
branch office, telecommuter and education markets. The SonicWALL Internet
security appliance is a high-performance, solid-state product that provides a
robust, reliable, easy-to-use and affordable Internet security solution.
SonicWALL's family of Internet security appliances offers firewall protection
and an expanding array of value-added services. These services currently
include anti-virus, VPN, strong authentication using digital certificates and
content filtering. In addition, SonicWALL offers its Global Management System
for distributed enterprises and service providers that wish to provide managed
security services to their hosting or Internet access customers. SonicWALL,
Inc. is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, contact
SonicWALL at (408) 745-9600 or visit the company Website at
http://www.sonicwall.com.
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For Additional Information Contact:
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Raj Dhingra
SonicWALL, Inc.
(408) 752-7943
[email protected]
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Julie Connolly
Ruder Finn
(415) 348-2734
[email protected]
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Certain statements in this press release are "forward-looking statements" within
the meaning of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended. Forward-looking
statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management at the time the
statements are made and are subject to certain risks and undercertainties that
could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in the
forward-looking statements. Factors that could affect SonicWALL's actual
results include, but are not limited to, the "Risk Factors" described in our
Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including our Prospectus dated March
16, 2000. All forward-looking statements included in this release are based
upon information available to SonicWALL as of the date of the release, and we
assume no obligation to update any such forward-looking statement.
SonicWALL is a registered trademark of SonicWALL, Inc. Other product and
company names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of
their respective companies.
